Building Our Backyard Veggie Garden
This Spring/Summer our quarantine project was building our own backyard vegetable garden. We knew we wanted a space where we could grow our own fruits/veggies, but weren’t exactly sure how to go about it. My family is thankfully very avid in gardening and I think it comes from my Grandma and Papa on my mom’s side. When I was little, I remember running through my Grandma’s flower and veggie gardens thinking it felt like a jungle. My sister and I played hide-and-seek because many of the plants were taller than us and it always seemed kind of magical.
Now that Nick and I have our own space here, it’s a nice way of honoring those memories and I would like to think my Grandma would be so proud if she could see it now.
Once we had planned out where we wanted the garden physically, we took some time to use spray paint and map out the borders of the garden for our fill lines. Our backyard was previously very wet due to all the houses behind us sloping into it. So although a large part of the back of our yard is now gravel and garden, we truly didn’t lose any usable space.
Once we had outlined the space, I took to researching the best prices on gravel, topsoil, compost and delivery options. We were able to find two local companies who delivered the materials to our driveway for a very reasonable price. Unfortunately since we have a gated privacy fence, Nick and I did have to physically move everything from the driveway to the backyard (I think our neighbors thought we were nuts for having several tons of gravel and dirt sitting there for a month). I will NOT say that it was easy, but we did get in some extra workouts shoveling and transferring everything!
For the actual raised beds, we purchased these through Home Depot and I just searched for the best priced cedar beds that were easy to install. Each piece interlocks together and you just screw on the caps- super simple, and I was able to put them all together on my own. Each bed is 4 feet x 4 feet.
The fun part was then figuring out what we wanted to plant. We mostly chose to plant things we commonly eat, and then a few for fun just to see how they would do. Our main plants were butter lettuce, zucchini, radishes, tomatoes, asparagus, basil, bell peppers, carrots, onion, and tomatillos. For fun, we tried artichoke, sweet corn, golden watermelon, and potatoes.
There was definitely some trial and error and we learned some lessons for next year. Our sweet corn and artichokes did not turn out well. But our zucchini, lettuce and peppers killed it!!
To keep everything watered, Nick hooked up a hose that runs from the back deck to the garden. We installed irrigation tubing and the watering system is set to a timer that goes off once in the morning and once at night. This way we didn’t have to manually water all the plants each day. This was a life-saver and made a huge difference in the health of our plants.
This probably made it sound a little complicated, but honestly it was so much fun to have this project this year! And we haven’t had to purchase nearly any veggies since then. I have loved spending time in our garden and taking care of it. And we now also have a little fire pit and a bench and chairs so we can enjoy the view and relax! Next year, we’ll do a little more research on what will grow best in our area and try some new veggies!